With help from Eli Okun and Ali Bianco
Happy Father’s Day, it’s Irie Sentner, and Adam Wren, who’s reflecting on Playbook Facts of Life: As a parent of two young kids, the days are long but the years are short, and imagining in the hard moments being an 80-year-old time traveler coming back to their health and youth. It’s a helpful trick that makes the time all the sweeter. Get in touch and let us know how you’re spending the day.
Sen. Ruben Gallego set a pattern of splashy spending on luxury outings with his wife and to care for his children since launching his campaign for Senate in 2023, according to a Playbook review of campaign finance records and a person familiar with the senator’s spending.
The behavior could pose a threat to his efforts to turn the page on his longtime friendship with Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned from Congress in April amid allegations of sexual assault and a series of headlines about his misuse of campaign funds. Federal Election Commission records show Gallego used a joint campaign account with Swalwell to attend the 2023 Super Bowl (which raises fresh eyebrows around this X post from February).
The Arizona Democrat, who’s considering a presidential run in 2028, traveled to South Carolina, where he took part in the Democratic Party’s “On the Road” series on Juneteenth and hit spots in Greenville, Union County and Columbia. He’s also brought on former Biden administration deputy press secretary Andrew Bates to advise about political communications. Jacques Petit, Gallego’s communications director, told POLITICO that Gallego “is weighing all options for his political future.” He’s also established a legal defense fund.
Gallego used his leadership PAC to fund recent trips to Miami, Chicago, Disneyland and Disney World with his family. He tapped that PAC and his main campaign committee for more than $18,000 in reimbursements for child care since 2019 — including $400 to his wife’s mother for babysitting. Gallego also used a joint campaign account with the disgraced Swalwell to attend the 2023 Super Bowl in Arizona with his wife, Sydney.
Federal lawmakers can legally use campaign committee funds for travel, food, events and even child care, as long as those funds aren’t for “personal use,” meaning they may not cover activities that would exist irrespective of the campaign, according to the FEC. Leadership PACs are not even beholden to that “personal use” rule, meaning lawmakers have broad latitude to use the money they raise as long as it has some fundraising function. Gallego has leaned into that leeway, with his three children, Sydney Gallego, her mother and their full-time au pair frequently joining the senator on donors’ dime, according to the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation.
“He just spends his campaign account like it’s his personal slush fund,” the person told Irie. “He’s using campaign cash to live a luxury lifestyle.”
Gallego didn’t dispute using donor funds to pay for family travel or child care. “This is not breaking news,” he said in a statement to POLITICO. “With the rising costs of child care and the burden it has on the budgets of American families, Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House alike regularly travel with their wives and children, as is permitted by the FEC.”
The person familiar with his spending said there’s concern among some members of Gallego’s inner circle that he wouldn’t pass the required vetting to be president or vice president.
“Any person close to Gallego would know that he is one of the most vetted candidates after his tough 2024 campaign where millions of dollars were spent against him,” Petit said in a statement to Playbook. “Despite that, he overperformed the top of the ticket. Now he is focused on delivering for Arizonans and electing Democrats in 2026.”
Gallego has denied any knowledge of Swalwell’s actions and called for him to be expelled from Congress. Swalwell has called the allegations against him “false” and pledged to fight them.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told CBS News in April she had asked Senate leadership to investigate Gallego over allegations of misconduct that are “sexual in nature,” as well as “issues of campaign finance violations” but did not release details. A Gallego spokesperson called those allegations “right wing conspiracy theories.” Luna did not respond to a request for comment.
Whether Gallego can survive the earliest stages of exploring a 2028 bid remains an open question.
Asked about the status of the ethics probe, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune directed POLITICO to comments he made in April, when he told reporters “the Ethics Committee will be tasked with trying to determine whether there’s a there there.” Read the full report from Irie here
SUNDAY BEST …
— Energy Secretary Chris Wright on gas prices as the U.S. negotiates with Iran in Switzerland, on ABC’s “This Week”: “Oh, I’ve got long out of the business of predicting oil or gasoline prices, but they will continue to head down. Flows of oil and natural gas through the strait have already returned to normal, and they will continue that way, whatever happens with the negotiations with the Iranians. We’ve got growing American production, surging production in Venezuela. We’ve got cooperation with all the other energy producers of the world. So I think Americans can expect continued declines in energy prices.”
— Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on whether Trump should get credit for ending the war now, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “That’s like literally an arsonist starting a fire and getting credit for running out of the burning building. This president has led this nation into a disaster.”
TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
6 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR
1. IRAN LATEST: VP JD Vance arrived in Switzerland today for what he said would be “a couple days of talks” with Iran to launch the next phase of the ceasefire agreement, POLITICO’s Chris Lunday reports. “We’ve already made great progress over just the last few hours, and I expect that we’ll make additional progress in the hours to come,” Vance told reporters.
Knives out over Iran: The White House is sharpening its knives as President Donald Trump’s proposed Iran agreement sparks criticism on the right, POLITICO’s Sophia Cai writes in. “For the first year and a half of the administration, we were all buttoned up,” said a person close to the White House, describing an earlier restraint from publicly attacking fellow Republicans. “Not picking on Republicans on the same team. Now, there’s a new mentality in the administration.”
As negotiations continue in Geneva, Trump and his allies have ramped up attacks on conservative critics of the deal. Trump himself signaled frustration this week. “I’d be honest with you, I lost respect for some people,” Trump told Axios. Asked whom, he said, “hardliners” without naming names.
But the White House rapid response account, Donald Trump Jr. and allies like Alex Bruesewitz have taken the fight directly to conservative skeptics, targeting figures ranging from Sen. Ted Cruz and radio host Mark Levin to foreign policy analyst Max Abrahms, pro-DeSantis commentator Dave Reaboi and NewsNation’s Batya Ungar-Sargon.
“You’re going to start seeing that be a bit more common,” the person close to the White House said. “The message is pretty clear that the White House is serious about the MOU, and their attack dogs have been unleashed.”
2. KNOWING MARK CARNEY: “The Political Education of Mark Carney,” by POLITICO’s Calder McHugh and Nick Taylor-Vaisey: “In just over a year, [Canadian PM Mark] Carney has learned to navigate the deeply insular, often ugly game of Ottawa politics as a skilled tactician and ruthless party boss. The jetsetting king of Davos still clutches to the persona of a political outsider, more interested in the long arc of history than the petty grievances of the day. At home he benefits from an ‘informed naïvété,’ in the words of one close Carney adviser granted anonymity to speak candidly. Carney now can do the ugly work of politics precisely because Canadians believe he is above it.”
3. DISPATCH FROM NY: “Boxing, Rap Disses and a Giant Trump Statue: Inside the Race to Replace Elise Stefanik,” by POLITICO’s Nick Reisman: “[I]t should come as no surprise that the raucous, bitter battle to succeed Stefanik has become a circus, tearing Empire State Republicans asunder — and offering a crystal ball look, albeit cloudy, into a GOP future centered exclusively around Trump-accented spectacle.”
4. YOU’RE FIRED?: Trump today claimed on Truth Social that “Keir Starmer will resign as Prime Minister of The United Kingdom,” adding that he “failed badly on two very important subjects- IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY.” The embattled PM has not indicated that he plans to step down from his post. “Cabinet minister Peter Kyle said this morning Starmer has been spending part of the weekend reflecting on the ‘political realities,’” per the BBC.
5. TULSI’S GURU: “Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career,” by WaPo’s Jon Swaine: “I obtained hundreds of confidential memos detailing politics and policy guidance for Gabbard from her years in Congress, then embarked on a quest to identify who was behind them.”
6. TICKED OFF: Frustrations about ticket prices at the World Cup could be giving way to a political reckoning about ticket scams, POLITICO’s Gregory Svirnovskiy and Jacob Wendler report. The advocacy groups National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance “are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.”
PITCH INVADER — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is set to attend his second match of the World Cup when he is in the stands Monday at Lincoln Financial Field to see Iraq play France in Philadelphia, Adam scoops. He attended the Côte d’Ivoire vs. Ecuador match there a week ago with his wife Lori. Shapiro is also expected to hit the FIFA Fan Zone before the match.
MOMENT OF REFLECTION — President Donald Trump said last night on Truth Social that he would likely have to drain Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool once again, after his $14 million effort to rehab it has left the pool with peeling paint and filled with algae. The announcement comes about two weeks after Trump declared that his decision to re-paint the pool “American flag blue” was not simply a “paint job,” but “highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years.” He blamed the pool’s current state on vandalism. More from WaPo
ENGAGED — Calder McHugh, a reporter for POLITICO Magazine, and Megan Burns, a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology at Northwestern University, got engaged June 11 by the pond at McHugh’s grandparents’ home in Craryville, N.Y. They met in 2022 in Brooklyn, where they still live, through their mutual friend Tara Jayaram. Pic
WEDDING — Patrick Mocete, chief of staff to Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), and Allie Berding, director of operations to Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), got married over the weekend in Cincinnati. The soccer-themed wedding included a reception at FC Cincinnati’s TQL Stadium and plenty of World Cup watching. Kim officiated the ceremony. SPOTTED: Peter Freeman, Saat Alety, Callie Strock, Casey Contres, Linette Choi, Alex Cisneros, Andrew Renteria, Jimmy Peacock, Shine Lee, Sam Oh, Maggie Abboud and Annie Topp. Pic … Another pic
OUT AND ABOUT — Adrienne Elrod celebrated her birthday yesterday at Stephanie Cutter’s house. SPOTTED: Tammy Haddad, Jonathan Martin and Betsy Fischer Martin, Shanti Stanton, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan Capehart and Nick Schmit, Kate Bennett, Sabrina Singh and Mike Smith, Lily Adams, Kimball Stroud, Jen Psaki, Bruce Harris, Karen Finney, Mary Streett, Patrick Steel and Lee Satterfield, Elizabeth Thorp, Jay Dunn, Marc Adelman, Susan Brophy, Missy Owens, Eric Schultz, Mike Monroe, Phil Rucker, Dorothy McAuliffe, Bradley Beychok, Ryan Berni, Jen O’Malley Dillon and Patrick Dillon, Alex Hornbrook, Todd Webster, Laura Engquist and Jeff Zeleny.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-N.C.) … Chad Wolf … U.S. Ambassador to South Korea-designate Michelle Steel … Maury Riggan … NYT’s Elizabeth Williamson and Elizabeth Dias … Mary Beth Donahue … WaPo’s Laura Meckler … Cody Uhing … Shara Mohtadi … Madeleine Morgenstern … David Makovsky … Bully Pulpit’s Caroline Weisser … Sanam Rastegar … POLITICO’s Delece Smith-Barrow, Wiktoria Brodzinska and John Herlihy … Axios’ Mike Allen … Gary Maloney … Jake Maccoby … Inside Higher Ed’s’ Emma Whitford … Max Clarke … Greg Hitt … Sam Nunberg … former Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), Marjorie Margolies (D-Pa.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.) … Kate Kochman … Jill Farquharson … former Oregon Gov. Kate Brown … Brian Kamoie … Tony Carrk … Iyanla Kollock of The Hill Girl’s Guide … Gus Nathanson of American Bridge 21st Century
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